History Of The Distance Learning University

People tend to associate a distance learning university with the age of computers and the Internet. Actually, the practice of educating and learning when a great distance separates teacher and student goes all the way back to the 18th century. Records of newspapers from that time period in the British colonies of North America show advertisements in which teachers sought to instruct students in shorthand via the mail.

However, the practice did not become something common and consistent until the 19th century, when the US Postal service developed and became a reliable method of communication. In Great Britain, teachers also began to instruct students through the mail at about this time. The University of London declares that it was the first school to officially offer degrees to students who learned through the mail.

In the United States, this practice developed and became the basis for the correspondence schooling which was common in the 20th century. Students who could not afford to travel to a school, or could not afford to stop working, learned varied subjects through the mail. US universities also began to offer degrees through this method. However, as today, there were some degrees which could not be granted through the mail because certain classes required a student’s presence on campus and participation in hands-on applications. An example of such coursework might be found in chemistry courses. However, many degrees which relied primarily on students reading and writing about what they read were perfect opportunities to develop a distance learning university through the mail.

Since the early 1990′s, when the public became aware of the Internet, the distance learning university has become much more common. Most universities remain in their original brick and mortar form. However, almost all universities now utilize the Internet to teach certain basic courses online, saving classroom space for more advanced courses and allowing them to enroll many more students than they had before.

Community colleges and small universities have also taken advantage of the Internet to increase enrollment and their influence in the educational world. Many students at these schools take most of a course online and only come onto campus in order to take a few opportunities to apply their learning in hands on situations and to take tests. Only advanced courses require significant amounts of time on campus, during which periods students can confer with professors in person.

In addition to these online classes offered at traditional universities, there has also sprung up a new class of university which exists entirely online. These online colleges focus primarily on granting associate degrees and bachelor degrees in the humanities. Certain math courses can also be taught via the internet.

Since the turn of the century, many students have enrolled in these sorts of learning environments. They do so either to augment more traditional parts of their class schedule or to entirely depart from the old-fashioned format of classroom learning. The distance learning university experience involves more students, from various walks of life, every year.